"You know I'm going to kill you when I get out of here, right?" Sy struggled lightly against the chains around his wrists, glaring at the form of his captor in the dim light of the ship's hold.

"Shut up." The half-orc didn't even bother to glance back at Sy, instead just leaning against one of the bracing beams.

"No, seriously, I'm going to get out of these chains, snap your neck, cut you open with your own sword, chew on your femur for a while, then dump you overboard like the worthless sack of garbage that you are."

"Shut up."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a stunning conversationalist?"

"Shut up."

The young wolf gave an angry sigh and slumped back against the wooden hull of the ship. Well, so much for the "get your captor so angry he makes a fatal mistake" plan. It had worked out about as well as the "slip off your chains while the guard is distracted" plan and the "seduce the guard to lure him in close and then kill him" plan. He was just having a rotten day altogether.

Actually, given that he had been abducted off the streets of Avalon nearly five days ago, he was pretty sure that he could qualify the entire week as "rotten."

And it had started to be such a good day, too. There he was, walking the back streets of Avalon after a successful purse-cutting walk through the much more crowded main streets… And then the attackers came. There were three of them, two in front, and one behind. Sy barely had time to draw his dagger before they were on him. The one behind had slapped a bag over his head, and the two in front had become the one in front as Sy's thrown dagger caught the second in the throat. This was just prior to the bag, of course.

Then someone had rocked him to sleep with something heavy and blunt. Next thing he knew, he was waking up just as they were loading him onto the good ship "Bloodkeel", which apparently doubled as both a merchant clipper and a smuggler vessel specializing in sentient cargo. Soon he had been clapped in chains below deck along with forty or so other unfortunate souls, none of whom had even tried to engage Sy in conversation.

Which left the guard as the only viable source of entertainment at the moment.

"So Smiley. Can I call you Smiley?"

"Shut up."

"Ah, there's that sparkling personality we've all come to know and love. So, Smiley, where exactly are we headed on this little pleasure cruise? I paid full price for my ticket, and I want to make sure we arrive on time, y'know."

The half-orc didn't say anything.

"Hey, I think we just had a breakthrough here."

"Shut up."

"Okay, so it's two steps forward, one step back. I can work with that."

"Shut-"

"Up. I know. Anyone ever tell you you have a one-track mind?" Sy grunted and leaned back again. Well, it wasn't the first time he'd been clapped in irons and thrown in someplace dank and depressing… He'd find a way out of it and back to Avalon.